Ever since the discoveries of black lipid membranes, liposomes, and solid supported membranes, extensive work has been done in all these three fields. Emulating the structural and functional complexities of a biological membrane at a substrate surface is perhaps one of the most persistent challenges of modern materials chemistry because of the fragility and long term instability of the phospholipid PBMs.
In order to provide sufficient robustness, many synthetic gels incorporate silica. A disadvantage of previously described mechanisms for forming synthetic gels is that the mechanisms typically required significant amounts of an organic co-solvent such as ethanol, in order to dissolve silica precursors. Moreover, such mechanisms frequently additionally use an acid such as Hydrochloric acid (HCl) as a catalyst. However, solvents and acids such as ethanol and HCl are harmful to biological species, and make it difficult, if not impossible, to form membranes incorporating functional biologically active species.
The present disclosure provides the synthesis of robust synthetic selective and active transport systems in the form of functional biologically active species (including, for example, liposomes, cells, enzymes, proteins, light harvesting complexes, etc., entrapped or encapsulated in gels. These systems allow selective and passive or active transport of ionic, molecular and biological species through the incorporation of functional biological transport molecules in a rigid matrix. Robustness may be imparted, for example, by inorganic silica in between multilamellar layers of lipids. These active transport systems may then be incorporated into various mechanism and for a variety of purposes including, for example, nanofluidic devices, biosensors, drug-delivery, bio-fuel cells (enzymatic, whole cell), micro reactors (cells), separations and photonic devices.